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Southwest Washington Wildlife Reports
Fred Dobler, Wildlife Program Manager

January 30, 2006

Game Management Division

	Number of Deer Classified Fawn to Doe Ratio 1995 384 0.59 1996 431 0.55 1997 310 0.62 1998 604 0.65 1999 586 0.61 2000 520 0.46 2001 523 0.51 2002 456 0.44 2003 757 0.51 2004 603 0.54 2005 585 0.55
Region 5 Deer Productivity Survey Results: 1995-2005 [ Click image to enlarge ]

Black-tailed Deer Management– Biologist Holman summarized the Regional deer herd composition data for 2005. This year's pre-season deer survey efforts by both volunteers and WDFW staff resulted in the classification of 585 blacktails. The lack of funding to conduct aerial deer surveys in 2005 made volunteer survey efforts especially important this year. Of particular note are the contributions of The Campbell Group's foresters in GMU 530, SDS Lumber Company's foresters in GMU 578 and the U.S. Forest Service's efforts in the Cascade Mountain GMUs. Thanks to all those that helped.

The data gained from the above-referenced effort is used as one of the inputs into the Region's Sex, Age, Kill method of deer population estimation. Per the requirements of the Game Management Plan and WDFW's mission statement, we are to manage black-tailed deer in the Region in such a way as to not negatively impact the overall population i.e. not reduce the deer population. This presents a significant challenge given many contributing factors that are detrimental to deer at a landscape level. These include; the spread of suburbia into areas of quality deer habitat, conversion of agricultural areas to industrial-residential uses, a variety of forest-practices related changes including the cessation of timber cutting on federal lands, use of herbicides on forest plantations, road construction, etc., the onset of the hairloss syndrome in the mid-1990's, and our statutory requirement to respond to "damage". Quantification of biological data related to the deer population allows us to set appropriate hunting seasons amidst the backdrop of the many factors affecting the population that we are not able to control.

The primary focus of the productivity surveys is to determine the annual recruitment of young animals into the population, or fawn to doe ratio. The 2005 fawn to doe ratio of 55 fawns per 100 does documents the third year in a row of slightly improved ratios following the recruitment low-point of 44 fawns per 100 does recorded in 2002. In spite of this short-term improvement, productivity is still below the levels recorded during the late 1990s. Please see the attached figure for an illustration of the 11-year history of summer productivity surveys for black-tailed deer in Region 5.